Disordering Death
by Egusi Soup
Summary: Harry and Ron go back in time. Unfortunately, the punchline for this joke got lost somewhere in the Veil. Drabble fic.
1. Bad Eggs

1- Bad Eggs

* * *

They were dead.

"Perfect," Harry said to himself after what felt like a long moment had passed. He couldn't even bring himself to look around; he knew the space would be misty and colorless, just like the entrance to the Veil had been. "Teddy's going to cry when he doesn't see me tonight."

Having been dead once, Harry thought he might be a little more prepared for his second and final time, but as there was no Dumbledore or anybody, really, to take the shock off his mind, all he could do was revel in the nothingness he felt.

He sighed.

Ron turned wide eyes on his friend, clearly half-way to being catatonic. He'd been silent for the last what-felt-like-an-hour and Harry thought he himself was doing pretty well, all things considered.

Oh, he was still in shock, so that was why he wasn't going off in a murderous rage, but he kind of had a bit of experience with being dead. So the whole 'Am I Really Dead?' spiel had been bypassed the second he recalled what had happened.

He really shouldn't have agreed to going out to dinner with his fellow Unspeakables. He really shouldn't have allowed Malfoy to goad him into taking a few drinks. But could anyone really blame him? He'd been hungry. And once he'd had himself a huge filling of this really good French thing Daphne had ordered for him, he'd been thirsty. Figures those two Slytherins would be working together.

He'd always known Malfoy was a bad egg. Blond (and now blonde) Slytherins as a whole were bad eggs.

"It's okay, Ron. Dumbledore is going to show up soon." Harry uselessly consoled his friend. He paused before he asked, "I don't suppose you have a Horcrux in you, do you?"

The look Ron gave him could have curdled Firewhiskey.

Harry cracked a grin at him in response, but then he noticed a hooded figure standing a little bit away from them.

Ron noticed him, too, but visibly wilted when a giant scythe three times their combined height materialized next to that figure and stretched towards them ominously.

Harry simply sighed.

He knew exactly who that was.

* * *

A/N: Hello! And, yes, chapters will be between 300-500 words each. I'm a fan of forthright's style of writing and I've been on a binge of Fix-It fanfics lately. And, please, NO, No, noooooooo Ron is not getting bashed in any way shape or form. Thank you!


	2. Likely and Plausible

The problem with magic, Ron lamented, was that the more something didn't make sense, the more likely and plausible it were to happen.

He could list off quite a few things that were insane, especially by wizarding standards (a flying muggle car, basilisk in a girl's lavatory, polyjuicing as another human being for a whole school year to trap a fourteen year old during a dangerous school tournament, a dark lord-), but of course Harry would beat those standards.

Of course.

Watching his best mate argue with Death (the figure had called itself Death and Ron was a little sceptical as time wore on and he watched the figure actually participate in arguing with Harry, a whole mortal compared to its immortal self), Ron almost wished he did have a Horcrux hidden away in his body so that he could just wake up and get back to life and continue because yes, being dead was very, very disconcerting.

"Ron has to come with me," Harry loudly insisted.

Ron blinked thrice at the mention of his name. "Ron has to what?" he suspiciously asked.

Harry glanced over his shoulder and motioned uselessly at the cloaked figure of Death. Ron would have loved to figure out what Harry meant, but his gaze had gone to the wickedly sharp blade of that unnecessarily tall scythe that loomed over everyone.

"Death said he will send me back to the realm of the living if I promise to get rid of the Horcruxes and preserve the Resurrection Stone," Harry told him with a put-upon sigh. Ron raised an eyebrow because Death had sighed at the same time in the same way.

"So basically beat Voldemort again?" Ron drily asked. "Does that mean we are going back in time?"

"We, yes," Harry hurriedly said with a glare towards Death who glared back. Ron eyed Harry strangely when he threw his hands up in the air and shouted, "Ron is coming with me to wherever you send me!"

"Harry!" Ron sharply said. "You're yelling and -"

The famed Boy-Who-Lived snapped his head to glare at his friend. "What? I'm bargaining for our lives here and you're content to just keep quiet and not say a word -"

"Horcruxes and Resurrection Stone, yes, I got it," Ron impatiently said. He tried not to rudely gesture at the so-called Death but it was hard. "I want to know how and when. Will we be going back to our younger bodies or do we have to stay hidden and help them?"

"I- oh." Harry's mouth fell open, stunned, as he turned with his whole body to face Death and argue the specifics of this mission out of the entity's tight-lipped figure.

Ron sighed. Harry must not have caught on yet, but Ron had.

He didn't know if that figure was truly Death or not, but Harry was the only person who was hearing it.

Ron knew he'd had his wand on him when they had 'died' (what wizard went anywhere without his wand?), but his wand was nowhere to be found. Neither was Harry's holly wand either.

However, Harry was waving something around at his side in agitation. He always grabbed his wand and loosely waved it when he was truly frustrated.

And when Harry pointed the wand in his hand at Death with a cold glare and a murmured order, Ron realized that yes, that figure must be Death and yes, that was the Elder Wand in his best mate's unyielding grip.

Harry had a lot of explaining to do once they were done in this weird mist place.


	3. Death Says Take

3 - Death Says Take

* * *

After the final battle, Harry may have gotten rid of the Hallows, but that didn't mean anything to the title. Death appeared and followed him everywhere, calling him Master, whining like a pathetic puppy for attention. Even on his assignments, Harry had a very hard time pretending he didn't have an all-powerful immortal figure hanging around and waiting for orders. He was thankful that he shared his office with Stephen Cornfoot and that Stephen, though a Ravenclaw, was only observant during the hours of not-at-the-office. Stephen only liked the active part of being an Unspeakable - solving mysteries, playing with experimental artifacts, mastering and improving modern spells, etc. Anything to do with paperwork was left to Harry who left it to sit on his desk while he was off doing one thing or another (their department Head, James Urquhart, was always on their case about paperwork).

Death poked people who made Harry angry (Daphne Greengrass and Fay Dunbar), fetched the Hallows and left them in random places only for Harry to banish them again, stared unblinkingly at him when he was trying to speak to another human and genuinely made a nuisance of itself.

But Harry coped.

Well… he tried to.

Death was the reason why he had broken up with Ginny, moved into a flat near Grimmauld Place, and had taken up a weird joint custody of Teddy with Andromeda -

_Oh, Teddy. _

Harry looked away from both Death and Ron to consider his options.

Either he died and moved on to meet his parents, Sirius, and Remus (and maybe Snape, he guessed) in the place beyond death or he went with Ron to a year before their births and complete the task Death had given them… thereby taking him away from his current friends and the ones he considered family.

They were two very, very hard options. Both would let him see his parents again, but the second would let him prevent their deaths.

But the first would let him rest… _finally…_

"The shop," Ron quietly said. "Fred needs to run the shop, too."

Harry glanced up at Ron only to wince at the anguish he saw there. The Weasley family had taken Fred's death very hard. Ron still pretended that Fred was alive whenever he talked about the joke shop, even. He knew it was selfish and heartless to say that he had lost more people than them, but Harry supposed that for a family so big and close, losing one must feel like losing a lot.

_Pain is pain, Harry. _

"Take him with you, then, Master," Death finally whispered. Harry mentally snorted because of course he was taking Ron with him, whether Death permitted it or not. He was called Master for a reason, wasn't he?

"So we would just appear there then?" Harry bitterly asked. "No background or anything? They would be at war around then so we would be very suspicious looking."

"Master?" Death queried. "Take a name."

Harry tried not to roll his eyes. Of course, Death's advice was to take - what else would it have been?

"Take whatever you want, Master," Death sweetly crooned into his ear. "Death will provide."

Harry eyed his so-called servant strangely before he sighed and faced Ron.

"I'm definitely claiming the bullet modification form of the Patronus," Ron bluntly told him before he could say a word. He crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air that was reminiscent of his own Unspeakable partner, Daphne Greengrass. "Malfoy practically stole it from me so it's only fair."

"Ron?" Harry asked, before he understood what Ron meant. Ron was going to patent the spell creation that Malfoy had technically stolen from him which would only be possible if he did go back in time.

"If you don't want to go, that's fine, but Fred needs to run the shop, too. George is bloody useless at accounting things."

Harry grinned at his friend. "I've got a few people of my own that I need to save, too. So, you're doing it?"

Ron grinned back. "Of course, mate. It would be a shame if we didn't."


End file.
